The European Union is threatening to suspend a data-sharing deal with the United States that is designed to track terrorist bank funding. However, there are suspicions the National Security Agency was stealing financial data from EU citizens.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU commissioner responsible for
investigating the implications of the NSA and GCHQ spy scandal,
said the Terror Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) of 2010, which
supplies bank and credit card transaction information to the US
treasury in an effort to trace funding to terrorist groups, may
be in jeopardy if it is determined the Americans were abusing the
agreement.

Malmstrom said she was unhappy with the information supplied by
the US government, saying the Americans need to provide more data

"I am not satisfied with what we have received so far,"
the commissioner told a European parliament committee debating
the NSA disclosures. "Whilst from the US reactions last week
we now have some understanding of the situation, we need more
detailed information in order to credibly assess reality and to
be in a position to judge whether the obligations of the US side
under the agreement have been breached.

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British
intelligence agency that has also come under suspicion of EU
commissioners when it was revealed the organization was
collecting all online and telephone data in the UK via the
Tempora program, also revealed in the NSA disclosures.

"A decision to maintain the agreement or to consider proposing
its suspension is a serious matter,” Malmstrom admitted.

Ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United
States, a number of controversial security measures were passed
under then President George W. Bush. Much of the legislation,
however, was put into effect without any public debate.

The Terror Financing Tracking Program (TFTP) was one such piece
of legislation that is now, following the NSA revelations,
raising eyebrows among some of America’s leading allies.

TFTP is a collaborative effort between the Central Intelligence
Agency and US Treasury that has provided US officials “with a
unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist
networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our
authorities," Stuart Levey, an undersecretary at the
Treasury, said in an interview with The New York Times in June
2006.

The agreement required EU authorities to transfer data to the US
treasury from the Brussels-based system Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

This provided US officials with a large amount of data since the
majority of international interbank messages use the SWIFT
network. According to the SWIFT website, “more than 10,000
financial institutions and corporations in 212 countries…exchange
millions of standardized financial messages” daily.

Although Levey ensured that “multiple safeguards” were put
in place to protect against any unwarranted searches of records,
EU MEPs are demanding that TFTP be scrapped following recent
reports that the NSA was “also tapping into the SWIFT
databases to gain access to the private data of Europeans on
their financial dealings,” The Guardian reported.

A New York Times report ("Bank data is sifted by U.S. in
secret to block terror," June 23, 2006) on the program
detailed a “significant departure” as to how the
government acquires financial records through TFTP.

“Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved
warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead
relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records
from the cooperative (SWIFT),” it said.

Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament,
said the US spying activities aimed at the European Union meant
that bilateral agreements - including another one divulging
European air passenger details to US authorities - should be
canceled.

"For me the TFTP agreement is effectively dead ... null and
void," she said, as quoted by The Guardian.

The EU parliament, however, does not have the authority to cancel
agreements with the United States. Such a move would require
proof that the NSA had abused its powers, and then propose a
cancellation of the EU-US agreement to which all 28 EU member
states would need to endorse unanimously.

Britain, for example, which played a large part in the NSA
surveillance work, would be able to veto any legislation that
moved to punish the United States over the scandal.

Senior EU officials and a SWIFT executive denied the reports that
the NSA was collecting financial data on European citizens.

SWIFT's lawyer, Blanche Petre, told the EU members that the
financial organization had "no reason to believe that there
has been an unauthorized access to our data."

Meanwhile, Rob Wainwright, head of Europol, the EU's law
enforcement agency, possessed no evidence that crimes had been
committed against the Brussels-based financial institution.

However, Wainwright said the agency had not been asked by any EU
government to investigate the NSA scandal.